all gonna feel the pain

Though I can strongly relate to both Nick Carraway and Paul Pennyfeather, the fictional character I identify the most with is Major Clipton from The Bridge on the River Kwai, gazing down at the panorama of broken bodies and twisted wreckage and despairing at the stupidity and waste of it all: "Madness! Madness!"

An American-educated (tossed around by the media like it's a mark of distinction, though there is no shortage of dumbasses the descriptor applies to) leader of Georgia, a Western-friendly former Soviet republic, tries to mobilize domestic support by appealing to nationalism. He decides to retake a breakaway province with a carefully timed surprise attack that less carefully fails to consider the presence of a couple thousand Russian separatist-friendly "peacekeepers" in said province.

The usual stable of neocon loudmouths, feeling rosy with the glow of Cold War nostalgia, offer their expert predictions about how a massive global military power will be humiliated on the battlefield by 18,000 American-trained troops. Russia is happy to put those theories to the test, as the offensive gives them a plum opportunity to soothe its amputee's itch with a liberal dosage of military force, as well as deliver a message to the West and it's former Soviet proxies about fucking around in Russia's traditional spheres of influence.

The Russians defy the experts' proclamations, put the Georgians to flight, and systematically degrade their military infrastructure over the course of a few days. With his country being hammered by an implacable foe, the Georgian leader makes it his solemn responsibility to act like a true leader to his people in their hour of need....by appearing on American television and making hyperbolic pronouncements and chastising the Western powers for not backing him up and/or shielding him from the consequences of his massive lapse in judgement.

His words are echoed by the usual suspects in the media, who dust off the pre-1989 propaganda lexicons (but not, interestingly enough, their history books) and jettison any pretense of objective journalism to engage in some pre-end-of-history style jingoism, weaving the present state of idiocy into a psuedo-historic tapestry which includes the Russian Civil War, World War II, and the 1968 uprising in Prague. It's astonishingly easy to call for military intervention when you're not the one who will be doing the fighting and dying.

And what of the West? A lot of tough talk masking the fact that there's really fuck all they can do without starting World War III, or worse -- without pissing off a major natural gas supplier. The opportunity the conflict provides to bitch out Putin and Company is welcome, but behind the strong words and messages of moral support for the Georgian government is the uncomfortable and unspoken acknowledgement that no one wants to risk a broken nose because his or her reckless buddy picked a fight with the biggest bully in the bar...especially when you've been telling everyone for years that that the bully is no great shakes.

Russia, on the other hand, has shown a great deal of enthusiasm for twisting the knife as long as it's diplomatically feasible, relishing the opportunity to make its rival global powers twist impotently in the wind.

Ah, what a lovely thing geopolitics is, and if the people -- Georgian and South Ossetian -- whose nationalism was exploited to make this happen are the ones who are suffering most, they can take solace in the knowledge that it has all been done for the highest of ideals.

Icon AD - Fight for Peace (from the Don't Feed Us Shit EP, 1982; collected on Lest We Forget, 2006) - A paradox I can get behind.

all for a good cause

Doesn't it just warm your heart?

Bing Crosby - Dear Hearts and Gentle People (from The Definitive Collection, 2006) - A song that just screams out for ironic appropriation (see also the recently unveiled Fallout 3 trailer), especially in light of some of the allegations made about Der Bingle's domestic life.

The Breeders - Happiness is a Warm Gun (from Pod, 1990) - Only a Boston-based alt-rock side project could be this precise.

goalposts moved while u wait

(from The Flash #145, June 1964; by Fox, Infantino, & Giella)
So Basra and Sadr City have become the latest theaters in Iraq's inevitable slide into civil war. This current wave of violence is between factions within the country's Shiite community, demonstrating the continuing fractalization of internal strife in the country.

It's the Pandora's Box scenario envisioned by the foreign policy realists prior to the invasion of Iraq and dismissed out of hand by the neoconservative contingent. The present situation is exactly what the "surge" strategy was supposed to forestall, boosting troop levels as a means of generating a level of security in which political reconciliation and stability could take root. Yet even as events once again prove the limitations of conventional military superiority in dealing with counter-insurgency scenarios, the "success" of the surge approach continues to be trumpeted by the powers that be and the mainstream media's host of enablers.

If what we're seeing is supposed to be viewed as a success, then I clearly need to reassess my own life, as under those metrics it can only be an unending series of laudable accomplishments.

That incident a few days ago with the staplegun and my thumb? A triumph for Andrew-ocracy!

When I slipped on the pile of magazines the other night and nearly dislocated my shoulder? Mission accomplished!

My first semester in college where I tried my hand at majoring in physics? A series of victories, despite what the anti-Andrew biased report card might have said!

The time I deliberately provoked my wife and she mashed wet cat food onto my face? A resounding achievement!

When I was a kid and stuck a nail under the tire of my dad's car? A remarkable accomplishment, ruined only by my father's hectoring negativity!

I'm beginning to understand the allure of adhering to neoconservative ideology...

The Ankh - Before Success (from a 1982 single) - Female vocals and a minimalist gothy feel? Yes, please. I make no attempt to conceal my biases.

Iggy Pop - Success (from Lust for Life, 1977) - Mr. Pop wrote the lyrics but the sound bears the unmistakable influence of co-writer David Bowie. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, mind you...

so many mothers sighing

The Apotheosis of War (1871) by Vasily Vereshchagin
Has it really been five years? Why it seems like only yesterday that the Powers-That-Be were promising to shock and awe their way to victory in Iraq, and that the road to Baghdad would be sprinkled with rose petals and lined with cheering throngs of the newly-liberated grateful.

It was supposed to be an easy and clean war, sanitized and vetted for all-ages consumption. Go in, collect a full suit of psuedo-comically nicknamed war criminals, secure Saddam's stash of death rays and other imaginary superweapons, change the nameplates on the government buildings, and convince the newly installed puppet democratic government to sign over the country's petroleum rights to western interests. After that, it would just be a matter of setting up a few permanent military bases before moving onto to the next chosen recipient of American largess from the barrel of a gun. The costs of rebuilding and occupation were to be paid with the gusher of petroleum revenues anticipated to flow once Iraq had been set on its neoconservatively correct course.

Five years, a half a trillion (a low-ball figure) dollars, and an immeasurable amount of human misery later, American forces are involved in an ugly guerrilla war with no end in sight, with the metrics of progress calibrated to resolve issues that we were assured would not arise. Even the vaunted "surge," with its widely trumpeted "success," is merely a bit of strategic sleight-of-hand to placate dissent on the homefront while failing to accomplish anything of lasting import, and amounts to nothing more than deploying a large bucket brigade to bail out a flooded neighborhood while ignoring the breaches in the levee.

The Iraq War has been such a colossal and unforgivable waste in so many ways, and I can't shake the feeling that future historians will point to the Bush cabal's misadventure in arrogance as the point of America's irreversible decline as a superpower -- a mad fling on borrowed money undertaken without regard for how many lives are wrecked, friendships damaged, and property ruined in the process.

I'd like to hope that the upcoming presidential elections will change things, but unless the Democrats take immediate steps to staunch their self-inflicted internal hemorrhaging, all signs point to a victory in November for John McCain, a man who, despite his (undeserved) reputation as a straight-shootin' maverick, combines the political ethics of Ulysses S. Grant and the geo-political subtlety of Douglas MacArthur.

David Bowie - Five Years (from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972) - I suspect the coming apocalypse will be less literal and more existential in nature -- an endless cycle of degradation, humiliation, and petty cruelties committed simply because there will be nothing else left to do.